Originally published by Weekend Edition,
Radio Free Georgia,
WRFG-Atlanta 89.3 FM, April 4-6, 2014

On April 7, 1968, the body of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lay in a coffin
at Spelman College's Sister's Chapel in Atlanta. King had been assassinated
three days earlier on April 4 in Memphis. That weekend, I was one of
throngs of people on the Spelman campus paying homage to the great man.
Walking toward to coffin at the front of the chapel all you could hear was
the sound of footsteps and weeping.

You looked at him through a clear glass cover over the coffin that was
constantly being wiped clean by pastors on either side. One of them was
Reverend Lawrence Carter, now Dean of the Morehouse University King Chapel.
He told me years later that the glass was placed on the coffin because as
people walked by their tears fell on King's exposed body. The pastors wiped
away the tears.

King's leadership role in America paralleled many initiatives and movements
for justice throughout the world that faced challenges within the context
of the struggle between the East and the West in the Cold War era. After
World War II, in fact, anti-colonial movements spread exponentially
throughout the world, including in the U.S. that incorporated demands for
justice and independence. The reaction against these movements has not been
benign.

Prior to his assassination in 1968, King had played what is a universally
acknowledged instrumental leadership role in the Civil Rights movement in
America. His and others leadership was a challenge to some of the most
egregious discriminatory policies in American history, largely centered in
the Jim Crow South. Some of the leading campaigns were the bus boycott in
Montgomery in 1955 resulting in a reversal of laws that had prevented
integrated seating on public transportation; and the profound 1964 Civil
Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act that swept away the unequal
treatment of Black Americans that had been in place since the end of the
reconstruction period in the 1800's after the Civil War.

After all these and other successful initiatives in civil rights, King
recognized that if you have the right to vote, to travel, to stay in
hotels, to eat in restaurants, and other rights, what good is it if you
can't afford to pay the bill. He wisely decided to shift his focus to
economic rights.

This shift of emphasis was the final outrage and the reaction was swift.
America's corporate and government elite would no longer tolerate his
leadership. They were obviously not as bothered by his civil rights
activities, although all the indications are that there were plans to
assassinate him as he marched for voting rights on Highway 80 from Selma to
Montgomery in 1965 (Pepper, 2003).

In 1968 King was killed in Memphis while supporting the garbage workers
demands against poor treatment, discrimination, and dangerous working
conditions. He and others were in Memphis as part of the organizing
campaign for the Poor People's March to Washington to demand a shift in
Congress' budget. Specifically, they wanted the federal dollars devoted to
the war in Vietnam transferred to programs that would instead benefit the
disadvantaged in America.

The plan was for thousands of the poor throughout the country to camp out
in Washington D.C. to then pressure the government for changes in the
budget.

Please note also that there were huge profits being made by U.S.
corporations during the Vietnam War (Carter, 2003). The speculation of a
loss of the federal dollars into the coffers of corporate America was
clearly not appreciated.

The FBI surveillance of King throughout his career is now widely known.
What is not necessarily acknowledged, however, is the extent of the
government surveillance.

And what is also not generally recognized is that his assassination was
part of a pattern of American government and corporate elite since the 1917
Bolshevik Revolution in Russia to demean or destroy individuals or
movements that challenged the capitalist model. All of this became
intensified in the Cold War era after World War II.

Invariably the label "communism" was invoked, particularly after the
chilling effect of the McCarthy era anti-communist witch-hunts in the
1950's as a way to undermine demands for justice. Huge posters across the
South labeled King as a communist. In fact, in almost every instance
whatever King did that challenged the status quo in the Jim Crow South was
labeled as "communist" activities. It had nothing whatsoever to do with
membership in the communist party or even his beliefs for that matter. The
propagandists paid no attention to that. It was his leadership and
influence that concerned them. King was not a member of the Communist
Party. He was, however, unsettled by the unjust laws and the exploitation
of workers within the context of the capitalist model.

King joins the list, for example, of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo (1961),
President John Kennedy in the U.S. (1963), Robert Kennedy in the U.S.
(1968), Salvador Allende in Chile (1972), Archbishop Oscar Romero in El
Salvador (1980), Pastor Minda Gran in the Philippines (1989), as well as
thousands of others too many to list here who, throughout the world,
demanded justice or change and were killed.

It is also now speculated and in most cases proven, that all of these
leaders above were assassinated with the prompting or support of the FBI or
the CIA or U.S. government initiatives. Invariably they were backed by the
powerful alliance of corporate and government leaders and/or inclusive of
military and surveillance training in the US.

For example, in the early 1980's retired U.S. General John Singlaub, who
was president of the World Anti-Communist League, held a meeting in
Singapore with high-ranking officials of the U.S. military to launch an
anti-communist campaign in the Philippines. The reason for this campaign
was that opposition to the extension of the U.S. Military Bases Agreement
in the Philippines was rapidly growing. The U.S. supported Filipino
paramilitary groups for this purpose. In fact, while visiting the
Philippines the 1980's, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clarke publicly
admonished the U.S. for this practice.

Lists of respected activists to be targeted for summary execution were
developed and implemented. Methodist Pastor Minda Gran was one of those
victims. She had been planning a clothing drive for the poor when she and
her husband were assassinated in 1989.

I investigated the Gran assassination with pastors from the United Church
of Christ of the Philippines. Her coffin and that of her husband were in
the living room of her humble home. I saw blood and some of her brain
splattered on the wall upstairs where she had been killed. Members of her
community were stunned by this assassination and some told me they were
going into hiding. As with King, the tears in this rural Filipino community
were abundant in response to this loss.

The western capitalist corporate interests and its control of the world's
economic and trade interests have subsequently become entrenched since King
was assassinated but his message still resonates. As William Pepper noted
in the Epilogue of his book "An Act of State: The Execution of Martin
Luther King" (2003):

"Martin King understood as had Ruskin and Gandhi before him that it was not
the lack of money that was the problem, but the deprivations associated
with a lack of money that denies access to the essentials of a decent life.
In the post-Second World War period he saw the rights of people being
steadily subordinated to the rights of transnational corporations. In
January 1, 1993, 27 years after his death, that inexorable movement was
virtually completed.

The framework for the post-1945 economy had largely been worked out by the
United States and Britain. It called for the creation of three multilateral
institutions — the World Bank, the IMF, and an
international trade organization. This last was not related then to the
General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs (GATT), which was established as a
body through which multilateral trade agreements were developed and
enforced. With the demise of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the
1990's, however, there were no longer any alternatives or restrictions on
the planet to the spread of corporate colonialism....

Martin King's commitments to social and economic justice went beyond the
contemplative intellect into the arena of active life...This transcendent
struggle, this exalted commitment, emerged as an all-consuming passion of
Martin King. He acted upon it until he drew his last breath.

Heather Gray produces
"Just Peace" on WRFG-Atlanta 89.3 FM covering local, regional, national and
international news. She lives in Atlanta and can be reached at
hmcgray@earthlink.net. In the 1980s, Gray worked as the director of the
non-violent program for Coretta Scott King at the King Center in Atlanta.
This article on anti-communism will be part of a series.

General Programming Policy in WRFG's by-laws: WRFG is a community-oriented,
educational, alternative medium and our programming must reflect this. We
are for those alternatives that uplift human dignity and give people more
control over their lives. WRFG is opposed to those forces in our lives that
dehumanize and oppress people, especially economic exploitation, racism,
sexism, militarism and anti-foreign/anti-immigrant chauvinism.